Back in 1999 and 2000 dentistry was an uproar.
There was talk that the government were going to ‘un-ring-fence’ dental money.
There was discussion that something called ‘local commissioning’ was going to be able to decide where the money went for dentistry (or teenage sexual health instead).
At that stage I was the secretary of the East Midlands British Dental Association section and my boss was the chairman.
We would host meetings at Loughborough University with 250 dentists who got together to talk about stuff.
We would have 2 speakers a night, one junior guy who was starting out and trying to learn his trade and someone else who was dead famous.
We had evenings with people like Kevin Lewis which were enthralling and interesting and generous and warm and people set aside any differences they might have had professionally or culturally, and they just talked and discussed and found out things and informed.
We learnt stuff about being a dentist in those evenings and we learnt stuff about being a businessman and we learnt stuff about being a boss and we learnt stuff about being an associate and we learnt stuff about stuff.
It’s not the same as watching it online from your house.
So, everybody knows that the best place to learn is at the bar or at the meal or during the coffee break at the meetings.
It’s not the same posting a question on a webinar when no one can see you and it’s definitely not the same trying to have a discussion on social media.
Most people find themselves in an echo chamber now, too scared to ask the question to be embarrassed and therefore living in ignorance without the answer.
It used to be that we formed our opinions over months and years of assimilating information from different directions and now it seems we’re just fed garbage from a fire hose.
Blog Post Number - 3127
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